CORP/BIZ Hollywood Depression: Participant, Studio Behind ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ & More Woke Message Movies, Shuts Down

GO WOKE : GO BROKE


Hollywood Depression: Participant, Studio Behind ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ & More Woke Message Movies, Shuts Down​


Left-wing billionaire Jeff Skoll’s woke film studio Participant is reportedly shutting down operations and eliminating most of its staff — the latest victim of Hollywood’s sharp downturn that has seen a bloodbath of layoffs and budget cuts.

Participant, founded in 2004, often financed projects with social justice and globalist themes, including former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth and its sequel. Other titles include the Obama’s Netflix documentary American Factory and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc RBG.

The studio also helped bankroll two best-picture Oscar winners — Green Book and Spotlight.

Jeff Skoll (pictured, left) broke the news to Participant’s staff of roughly 100 on Tuesday, with almost all of them set to lose their jobs, according to a Variety report. There will be no new content development or production, while a skeleton crew will remain to oversee the studio’s library of about 135 titles.

“I founded Participant with the mission of creating world-class content that inspires positive social change, prioritizing impact alongside commercial sustainability. Since then, the entertainment industry has seen revolutionary changes in how content is created, distributed and consumed,” Skoll wrote in a memo obtained by Variety.

Hollywood’s tectonic shift to streaming entertainment has wreaked havoc with the specialty movie model that depends heavily on theatrical distribution to generate word-of-mouth business and awards-season buzz. Specialty titles that would once have received a theatrical release now almost all end up on streaming platforms in lieu of cinemas.

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Participant also experienced a number of high-profile box office flops — including the environmentally themed Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo, and the Matt Damon thriller Stillwater.

Participant has been led by former Universal boss David Linde, whose leadership brought prestige to the company with a number of high-profile releases, including Spotlight, Green Book, and Steven Spielberg’s The Post.

Other Participant tiles include Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, which portrayed the World Health Organization as a heroic force during a global pandemic; and the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times, a behind-the-scenes look at the Grey Lady.

Hollywood studios have been hit hard in the past year, enacting deep budget cuts amid a perfect storm of economic chaos that includes Americans continuing to cancel their cable TV subscriptions, the steep downturn in TV advertising, and streaming losses in the billions of dollars.

In addition, the industry is still recovering from last year’s strikes by Hollywood writers and actors.

Studios that have slashed their headcount in recent months include the Walt Disney Company, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Amazon MGM.
 

Illini Warrior

Illini Warrior
I don't understand >>>

Did this left winging billionaire actually think this venture was a profit $$$$ maker? - WOKE agenda on the big screen was a seller? ...

the Hollyweird movie downturn is partially due to the WOKEees - but this company was formed as a failure waiting to happen ....
 

mistaken1

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Skoll achieved his goal, the damage has been done, an investment in 'fundamental change', one of the merry band of enablers. I pray he comes to Jesus but if not may he enjoy the reward he has so richly earned.
 

Dobbin

Faithful Steed
With an economic downturn of the 1930s, everyone crowded into the theaters for a release and escape from the dismal economic outlook.

Hollywood and the 1930s is where Joseph Kennedy Sr. made his money - that is that which he didn't invest into bootleg alcohol.

Kennedy was born into a political family in East Boston, Massachusetts. He made a large fortune as a stock and commodity market investor and later rolled over his proceeds by dedicating a substantial amount of his wealth into investment-grade real estate and a wide range of privately controlled businesses across the United States. During World War I, he was an assistant general manager of a Boston area Bethlehem Steel shipyard; through that position, he became acquainted with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In the 1920s, Kennedy made huge profits by reorganizing and refinancing several Hollywood studios; several acquisitions were ultimately merged into Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) studios. Kennedy increased his fortune with distribution rights for Scotch whisky. He owned the largest privately owned building in the country, Chicago's Merchandise Mart.

Now, with the current downturn, everyone is escaping somewhere else?

Dobbin
 

Blacknarwhal

Let's Go Brandon!
With an economic downturn of the 1930s, everyone crowded into the theaters for a release and escape from the dismal economic outlook.

Hollywood and the 1930s is where Joseph Kennedy Sr. made his money - that is that which he didn't invest into bootleg alcohol.



Now, with the current downturn, everyone is escaping somewhere else?

Dobbin

I'm afraid so, good horse.

Movies are in decline. Video games aren't doing much better; ever since the Sweet Baby Inc scandal, they've been fighting off the woke too. Books have been in decline for years, and even music's having a tough time.

It looks like people are getting their dreams direct these days, and eating the lotuses fresh. Drugs and alcohol.
 

Tristan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
With an economic downturn of the 1930s, everyone crowded into the theaters for a release and escape from the dismal economic outlook.

Hollywood and the 1930s is where Joseph Kennedy Sr. made his money - that is that which he didn't invest into bootleg alcohol.



Now, with the current downturn, everyone is escaping somewhere else?

Dobbin

Online Games, TikTok, Drugs and Alcohol.
 


Nolte: Shuttered Studio Participant Discovers Social Justice Movies Don’t Sell​

1 Scott Heins/Getty Images
John Nolte17 Apr 202413

4:09


After 20 years of producing movies pretty much no one wanted to see, film studio Participant is shutting down, which means the loss of 100 jobs.

Don’t feel bad. Those hundred people hate you. It’s fine…

Has anyone watched one of these titles more than once?
  • An Inconvenient Truth
  • Good Night, and Good Luck
  • Waiting for Superman
  • Spotlight
  • Roma
  • Food, Inc.
  • North Country
  • Syriana
  • American Gun
  • Fair Game
  • Judas and the Black Messiah
  • R.B.G.
  • Just Mercy
  • Cesar Chavez
  • Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains
  • The Informant!
  • The Cove
  • Stillwater
  • American Factory
  • When They See Us
And those are just the more famous Participant titles. Over two decades, Participant produced more than 130 titles, including a biopic of Shirley Chisholm called Chisholm (I prefer the John Wayne version), John Lewis: Good Trouble, Dark Waters, On the Basis of Sex… There’s even a sequel to Inconvenient Truth that flopped, probably because none of the catastrophes predicted in the first movie came true.

That’s not to say Participant didn’t deliver the occasional decent title: Bridge of Spies, Deepwater Horizon, Lincoln, Green Book, A Most Violent Year, Citizenfour, and Contagion are pretty good, and I’ll forever be grateful to Waiting for Superman for exposing the cruelty of Democrats blocking school choice.

But most of what this company produced was vegetables, and no one goes to the movies to eat vegetables.

Your catalog is the key to survival in the Biden economy, where money is no longer free due to high interest rates, and the left-wing affirmative action of cable/satellite TV is drying up. Your catalog of films is there to create a constant revenue stream through home video sales, foreign sales, and television deals.

The problem with Participant’s catalog is that, with those few exceptions, the company failed to produce movies people want to see again.

Most of their product is propaganda, which has no rewatchability value. No one wants to see propaganda again, even those who agree with it. There’s no reason to see it again because propaganda leaves nothing to discover or think about.
One of Participant’s biggest hits was An Inconvenient Truth, which is all well and good. But it was nothing more than Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation of fear porn. How many people, even those who buy into this nonsense, watched it again? No one.

There’s no reason to. Message received. Whereas well-made documentaries — Grizzly Man, Hearts and Minds, Harlan County U.S.A., American Movie, O.J.: Made in America, Salesman, Heart of Darkness, Hoop Dreams, Gimme Shelter, Into the Abyss, Capturing the Friedmans, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, The Thin Blue Line, Grey Gardens, etc. — demand repeat viewings because they make you think rather than tell you what to think.

There’s a mystery there, something unknowable.

Woke has zero shelf life. It leaves you nothing to mull, nothing to answer or discover. Certainly nothing you wish to rediscover. And it’s not just Participant. All this woke garbage Hollywood’s been producing—billions and billions of dollars in lousy content, thousands of movies and TV shows, tens of thousands of TV episodes—is useless as a constant revenue stream through licensing deals. You might as well try to convince people to rewatch a deodorant commercial.

No one wants to see that again, even if they use the deodorant.
 

Bad Hand

Veteran Member
I haven't been to a theater in 30 years and I don't plan on going any time soon. I refuse to give my money to the people that are destroying the US.
 
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